How To Look Good Naked

I love make-over shows. Maybe it’s the idea that you can start with a woman lacking in confidence, unaware of her beauty, and with a few make-up tips and better fitting clothes, said lady transforms into a swan right before our very eyes. You feel like you’ve gone on the journey with her and you’re nearly as elated as she is when she finally gets to see how breath-taking she can look at The Big Reveal. ‘How to look good naked,’ is probably one of my favourite make-over shows, especially because the master of fashion A.K.A. Gok Wan, manages to transform appearances and multiply confidence without anyone undergoing nips here and tucks there at the hands of a plastic surgeon. (No I’m not anti plastic surgery per se, I just think it’s always nice when you can work with the looks God gave someone and still make them feel beautiful.)

Despite my allegiance to the show, if you’ve ever watched an episode, you will have also noticed that the show doesn’t actually fulfill it’s branding, and when the hours up, you won’t be any steps closer to improving your naked body. Unlike Gok, I am solemnly swearing this beautiful morning to not only provide looking good naked advice, but also feeling good naked tips. Look good= feel good? Or is it, feel good= look good? Is it just me or does your outward appearance have a strong correlation with how you feel on the inside? When you haven’t got that shape up, you’re edges need perming, or your skin is being an enemy of progress and breaking out all over the gaff, it’s really hard to still feel like you’re great and you have good things going for you. There’s an interesting relationship between how you feel and how you look, so, sort out one of them, and you’re halfway to happiness.

Maybe I’m just a shallow lass but when the mirror is telling me things I don’t want to hear it’s really hard to put my happy face on.

Last summer I came to a realisation. I remember I was looking through my Facebook photos when it suddenly dawned on me, and I felt a huge urge to share my recent discovery. As I picked up the phone to inform my various amigos, I broke the news to them gently: I wasn’t a beaut. Now don’t get me wrong, before this day I wasn’t under some impression that I was a head-turner or anything worthy of breath holding, but I did feel ‘more happy than sad’ when I faced my reflection. It was weird; all of a sudden I had been hit with this new reality that I was absolutely nothing special. Of course my friends responded in the way they do to most of the melodramatic things I say and rolled their eyes, telling me my utterances were foolish and foundation-less. But it’s like the more I said it, the more I came to terms with the average Joe I had always been but only realised I’d become. That’s when the change began…

I’d told myself I was Plain Jane and from that day I couldn’t see anything else. I wasn’t at despair with my mug-shot, it just didn’t bring me any kind of joy. If in the summer I only had an inclining that I was just your average girl, by the winter I had completely become her. I looked in the mirror and saw a ‘something lacking, nothing to write home’ about lass, looking back at me, and didn’t even realise the effect it was having on my outlook on life. I thought I was complacent with a ‘who cares if I’m not beautiful, why should I get to feel nice anyway’ attitude but it was slowly eating away at me and the sadness I felt when faced with my reflection spread to other areas of my life and hovered over me like a grey cloud ready to rain on my parade. It’s strange because we tell ourselves that there’s more to us than looks and then spend a whole lot of time letting our appearances govern how we feel and the confidence we lay claim to. So there I was, in a rut that I didn’t even know I was stuck in, when one moment threw me out of synch with my ‘I’m ugly, self-pity’, routine.

I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well. Psalm 139:14

Bible study one Monday got the cogs in my head turning as I was reminded of scriptures I absent-mindedly recite: life and death is in the power of the tongue. That was it. Hey presto! I had singly handedly made myself ugly and If I wanted to feel beautiful again I needed to speak it over myself, which is exactly what I did. Waking up and finding nothing in my appearance to smile about I looked into my eyes and told myself I was fearfully and wonderfully made. If God says I’m wonderful that means I’m a spice even when I just feel like rice with no salt.(spice= pretty person.) By the end of the week I had got my mojo back.

You can call me crazy all you like, but I genuinely did speak some pretty over my life, and within a week I saw it.

I guess I learnt three things.

Firstly: If you believe it you’ll see it.

I’ve always been a big believer in this so I don’t know why I let myself believe something I didn’t want to be true. It’s like self-fulfilling prophecy: once you convince someone they’ll amount to nothing, they start believing you and stop trying so hard to achieve. The Bible tells us everything we need to know about ourselves so when ideas come into our heads that don’t match up with what God says about us then we need to kick those thoughts to the curb where they belong.

Secondly: Don’t say things you don’t want to become/remain true.

Our words are way more powerful than we give them credit for. God made the whole world by speaking because:what we say, we create. This means we have to be ultra-careful to not curse ourselves and not let others curse us. We may have all felt like the exam we’ve just taken was a struggle but WE are not going to fail, if YOU feel like YOU are going to fail don’t include ME in your sentence. I know I sound extreme, but it’s time we started taking the things we say, and the things said about us more seriously.

Lastly: You are beautiful.

You may not fit into the current mass media definition of beauty but that’s the great thing about the world we live in, opinions change. God doesn’t. You might never feel world pretty, but as long as you know you’re God wonderful, to heck with magazine portrayal.

To everyone wishing they were model pretty, remember that your God defined beauty before any human could say what was the right and wrong way to look. Find your reflection in the Bible, there’s way more truth in that than your mirror.